Bedbugs and the Feminine Psyche

Women react to the prospect of bedbugs with an anxiety so deep and intense that it can properly be described as hysteria. Why is this? As a male, I see bedbugs as a great annoyance and nuisance; as a significant expense and inconvenience; as a problem to be solved; and an enemy (albeit tiny) to be crushed. The bedbug, for me, is something exterior to myself; something to be solved and attacked. My male identity boundary is clear, defined, rigid, and resistant so that I view the bug as extrinsic and objective. In accord with my aggressive, protruding male soma-psyche, I want to defeat and destroy this enemy. Should I feel some panic, I decisively quiet those emotions and assume an attitude of calm, objectivity and resoluteness to pursue the mission and conflict. But for women it is different. The woman is open and receptive: physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Her identity boundaries are porous, open, and receptive. In all ways, she is open to the other: her lover, her child, and the one in need or distress. This openness, at once exterior and interior, physical and spiritual, also entails, however, a vulnerability. Because she is open, she is at risk of hostile, malignant penetration. Anxiety is the constant companion for a woman because she is always at risk. If she is properly fathered and husbanded, that is, if she is cherished, valued and protected by a strong but tender masculine love, she is largely, but never completely, immunized against hysteria. Hysteria is the quintessential feminine response to an anticipated hostile penetration in the absence of protective, gentle, delighting masculine care. (By contrast, the prototypical male responses to such threats are the extremes of rage and apathy.) By contrast with rage which must find direction and purpose, hysteria is dispersed, chaotic and purposeless anxiety. And so we can see that the prospect of a bedbug infestation arouses profound anxiety, indeed hysteria, for the woman. Consider also that for the woman, her home is an extension of her body, a part of her identity. By contrast, the man, with his more rigid, defined identity boundary, sees the home as exterior to himself, objective and distant from his inner self. Even more significantly, the feminine psyche inhabits her own body in a distinctive way: she "is" her body in a more profound manner than "is" the masculine psyche. The masculine mind and heart has a capacity for abstraction, distinction, difference, transcendence; the feminine mind moves always to synthesize, unify, harmonize. I used to ask my students: "Which is true: 'I have a body' or 'I am my body?'" Of course, both are true: I am my body even as I (soul, psyche) am more than my body. I suspect that given time to reflect on this questions, women would more likely answer "I am my body." As an example we might contrast the distinct itineraries of Mary and Jesus to their now-glorified states: Jesus' soul left his body on Calvary, descended into hell (whatever that means!), and reunited with a now-glorified body by Easter morning; Mary's soul never left her body as she was assumed, body and soul always immaculate and united as one, directly into heaven. The masculine and the feminine mutually define each other as they come to co-inhere in each other: the female is delivered from anxiety as she receives the tender, delighting love of the man; the man is freed from rage and indifference as he is aroused into delight and purpose by the preciousness and loveliness of his beloved.